novatechflow | Alexander Alten

The bacnet-mqtt-gateway project is an open source protocol bridge that translates BACnet building automation traffic into MQTT messages for cloud and IoT systems. It provides discovery, polling, bidirectional writes, APIs, security, and easy deployment via Docker. Many enterprises struggle to unify BACnet with modern data pipelines and cloud platforms because BACnet is local-network only and not cloud ready. This gateway provides a scalable, secure, production-ready adapter for MQTT ecosystems and smart building integrations. The Problem with BACnet Building automation runs on BACnet . HVAC controllers, lighting systems, metering equipment: they all speak ASHRAE 135 . The protocol handles local control loops well. It fails at cloud ingress. BACnet relies on UDP broadcasts. These do not route over the internet or into VPCs. Your chiller controller cannot talk to AWS IoT Core . Your VAV box cannot publish to an MQTT broker. The air gap between operational technology and modern cl...

IoT security failures often originate during manufacturing. This article examines how signed firmware metadata and append-only registries improve device provenance and auditability. Using the novatechflow cerbtk proof of concept, we connect established IoT manufacturing guidance with a concrete implementation that records verifiable assembly events and device identities. I recently worked with an IoT project where we discussed device provenance during a security review. The question was simple: can you prove which firmware was installed on a specific device during manufacturing? The answer was no. Firmware builds existed in CI systems, device identities lived in spreadsheets, and assembly logs sat in a database that any admin could modify. The cryptographic chain that should connect these stages did not exist. This is not unusual. Large scale IoT deployments depend on manufacturing processes that are rarely verifiable after devices leave the factory. Firmware provenance, ke...

This article introduces infinimesh as a Kubernetes-native IoT platform built to integrate massive device fleets without cloud lock-in, and highlights its expanding plugin ecosystem for Elastic, Redis TimeSeries, SAP HANA, Snowflake and cloud-native object storage. Using lightweight Go-based Docker containers, plugins can run securely in user environments—even on AWS free-tier instances—while streaming device data directly into existing infrastructures like S3 or MinIO. The step-by-step example shows how quickly CloudConnect can move IoT data into object storage using docker-compose, with the plugin internally batching device payloads through Redis before exporting them as CSV. In benchmarking, the architecture handled millions of devices sending frequent JSON updates, demonstrating how infinimesh plugins simplify large-scale IoT data integration with minimal resource overhead. First, a short introduction to infinimesh , an Internet of Things (IoT) platform which runs completely in Kub...

I have a lot of embedded systems running in my product testing lab or at home, all of them either as Raspberries or self-made PCB with Yocto. Sometimes I can't reboot some systems, I think its the journald which causes some issues with SSD Cards, the error-message usually is: Failed to open /dev/initctl Anyhow, if you have this issue - a reboot can be force-forced: systemctl --force --force reboot Since a forced reboot does not sync the journal, the system typically comes up with a damaged FS. The remote fsck can be initiated by extending the command above with sudo tune2fs -i 1m /dev/DISK && touch /forcefsck && systemctl --force --force reboot (assumed you have access to a shell, via SSH or local access). When all goes fine, the system comes up with a clean FS. All this fuss comes from the SSD r/w actions, a well designed IoT embedded devices should have a flash mem part for the running OS.

This article explores how increasingly intelligent IoT devices are evolving into self-organizing mesh networks, where data flows continuously between sensors, actors, wearables and mobile devices without depending entirely on the cloud. Such ultra-dense, real-time communication creates data volumes and latency requirements that traditional Big Data tools like Hadoop cannot meet. The piece argues that meaningful IoT value arises only when stream processing at the edge, schema-driven data lakes, and scalable cloud components work together. It warns against cloud lock-in, highlights the importance of open standards, and stresses that IoT data must be governed with strong ethics and clear revenue intent—not treated as an unfocused collection exercise. As industries move toward fully interconnected systems, future CIOs must balance innovation with risk, designing architectures that use data responsibly while enabling new business models previously unimaginable. IoT devices are getting mo...

The article examines how the current Internet remains fragile due to centralized control and why Web3, distributed ledgers and Industrial IoT technologies enable a decentralized, device centric architecture. It explains how billions of machines can act as active network nodes, holding state, verifying identity and coordinating operations without intermediaries. It also outlines how trusted data pipelines, machine wallets and decentralized coordination frameworks will lead to resilient industrial systems and new autonomous machine economies. Web3, IIoT and the Next Internet of Autonomous Machines The early Internet succeeded because it offered open protocols, global reach and interoperability. Over time, however, the operational layer became dominated by a few cloud and platform providers. Outages in critical services illustrated the structural weakness of relying on centralized points for identity, storage and coordination. The next version of the Internet will not rel...